Posted
by
timothy
on Monday July 03, 2006 @03:22PM
from the uncle-10-point-buck dept.

tygerstripes writes "The BBC reports that a breakthrough in prosthetic technology will allow titanium to be grafted directly to the bone and then protrude from the skin without risking infection. Research by the Centre for Bio-Medical Engineering, UCL and Stanmore Implants looks into the way that the structure and porosity of deers' antlers prevents infection from entering the break in the skin. Early trials and a fairly gruesome picture show that by mimicking this they can successfully provide amputees with more comfortable, permanent prosthetics. Combined with bionic muscle and other recent developments, we may be very close to fully-integrated prosthetics."

How is this "insightful"? If this is all it takes for you to see evil, then it's no wonder you see everyone as evil. You need to seriously take a step back and breathe.

It's entirely possible that the reason they want to use people from the bombings of less than a year ago is that people who've been amputees already have artificial limbs and rather than make them go through the hassle of experimenting with something that may or may not work (artifical limbs are very expensive to customize, take a long time to make, and take an even longer time to fully adjust) they want to go with people who probably don't have artificial limbs yet.

I'm not saying I know what's going on, but there are a lot of reasons why this could have nothing to do with politics or evil and everything to do with getting the experiments and trials done as quickly as possible while causing the minimal amount of pain and discomfort to everyone involved.

Until you have any idea why they are making this decision - why jump to conlusions?

Well I'm sure they were deliberately supressing research on this just to fuck with the people who've been missing limbs for years. And of course you can easily twist those words to make it seem like only victims of that attack will be given access to the technology.Or it could be that the bombing was just a recent, widely known event that can be used to stir emotions and pique interest in the research. Average Joe loses a leg because he didn't use jack stands while working on his car? Sad, but it doesn't co

It's also possible they want to try things out with people who have fresh amputations, who's bodies aren't neccesarily completely healed yet, as they'd have to cut into tissue to fuse the new implants. I'm by no means a specialist about prosthetics, but when you're wearing a cup-style device wouldn't the tissue between the joint and the cup get worn down?Also, these people won't have already learnt skills related to their current prosthetics, so they won't be 'biased' as to how they work. Kinda like trying

No. Absolutely beautiful! This technology will most probably enable amputees to overcome the stigma of having a prosthetic limb. This technique allows to tightly integrate the artificial body part seemlessly. That certainly is not gross, but a Godsend.

Dude, don't knock it. Normally, you wouldn't see the protruding metal stub, which is just an attachment point, but rather the cosmetic (and hopefully functional) prosthetic. Hopefully, by having such a secure attachment point, future prosthetics can do away with the big plastic cup/socket and straps that get used today, which would make them less obtrusive and function more like replacement limbs.

Normally, you wouldn't see the protruding metal stub, which is just an attachment point, but rather the cosmetic (and hopefully functional) prosthetic.

The only new technique is the "antler mesh". Dentists have been using this same "post and prosthetic" scheme for about 15 years.

I had to have a tooth pulled back in the early 1990s (wow, has it been that long?), and they drilled a hole in my jaw, and implanted a small Ti post. When it healed a month later, they shoved on the false tooth.

The integration of Prosthetics w/o infection is a kinda holy grail of prosthetics, Now we will beable to make dataports that are merged witht he skin with ease. Also the ability to say make a prosthetic hand that uses the existing muscle in the forearm for movement and have it installed full time!!! Most prostetics have to be taken off at night tio give the skin some time to rest due to irritation and whatnot, now they can left on 24/7 and designed to be move like natural human body parts. Merge a litt

The concept that titanium fused with bone was discovered years ago when doctors thought "Hey lets use titanium cause its stronger then other materials and then went to remove it and found that the bone had fused with the titanium at a molecular level. In europe they have been doing this for years now but the FDA is slow to approve new technology and of course there is the problem with infection but what they don't tell you is that the risk of infection with a titanium graft that protrudes from the skin is

What I'm interested in is if there's already been a third kind of prosthetic movement control system invented.

My personal categorization of the different kinds of movement of prosthetic limbs:1. On/off movement in any direction, like your limb was controlled by the digital joypad of a console.2. Variable speed movement in any given direction, like your prosthetic limb was controlled by an analog joystick of a console.3. Absolute positioning of your limb, like the new Nintendo Wii controller or a mouse.

Is there anything like my third category available? Together with this new grafting technology it would mean almost complete recovery for amputees.

I know that the human body doesn't track it's own limb positions in real-time, even in normal mammals, but human movement is still more like category 3 than the other two.

Is there something similar out already? I read an article about a guy who's arm prosthesis was directly attached to an arm nerve. Paraphrased: "I could move it as if it was real, I just had to think about moving my arm".

So any info on category 3 movement controls will be appreciated, interesting stuff.

> Absolute positioning of your limb, like the new Nintendo Wii controller or a mouse.

Do you mean kinesthesia, the sense that detects bodily position, weight, or movement of the muscles, tendons, and joints? Most people's sense of kinestheia for their limbs is linked with visual feedback, like hand-eye coordination. If you're outdorrs, and asked to point at something, you're getting real-time visual feedback on whether your limb is pointing accurately at what you intended to point at. Same with ballet d

Yes, that's what I mean. But the way I understand it, only visual feedback is real-time. The body trains it's muscles so they know that a certain amount of muscle activation for a certain amount of time will place the arm into a certain position. If you take away the visual feedback and you paralyze the arm, the same muscle activation will do nothing for the arm, but the human will still feel/think, kinesthetically, that her arm is in a certain position.That's why I said that human limb movement is not exac

Sorry, I don't have any knowledge of the field beyond what I've read.Regarding kinesthetical feedback, I know that it can be expanded beyond just visual feedback. There's been research on biofeedback training where patients have gained voluntary control over normally involuntary bodily responses using audio cuess from a connected biofeedback machine.